Alrightie, I'm working on a new race and I was hoping to get some input / feedback on it, since the last time I was looking for some help worked out perfectly.

Now, personally I love Japanese culture, so I wanted to design a race that could embody Japanese elements in my campaign (human civilization is mostly Midevil Europe era, making it feel weird having Japanese-esque humans too) and I decided to do that with a humanoid fox race called the Vulpine.

I've been playing around with some ideas, and here's what I've come up with so far:

Vulpine Ability Modifiers:

+2 Wisdom / -2 Constitution: The vulpine are extremely cunning, but they have frail bodies.
Size - Medium: A vulpine gains no bonuses or penalties due to size.
Low-Light Vision: A vulpine can see twice as far in starlight or moonlight as a human.
Natural Reflexes: A vulpine is extremely springy and quick to react, granting them a +2 bonus to Reflex saves and Initiative.
Keen Senses: A vulpine has sensitive ears and eyes, granting them a +2 bonus to the Listen, Search, Spot, and Survival skills.
Weapon Familiarity: The vulpine are responsible for the creation of several weapons that other races see as strange and exotic. A vulpine treats the bastard sword, nunchuku, and kama as martial weapons.
Firefox: A vulpine's strong ties with nature grant them several powers. A vulpine can cast either Faerie Fire or Produce Flame a number of times per day equal to 1 + their Wisdom Modifier (minimum 1). Use half the vulpine's ECL, rounded up, as the caster level for these spells.
Woodland Stride: Vulpine live in the woods of the world and learn at a young age how to effectively travel through the undergrowth of the woods. Vulpine may move through any sort of undergrowth (such as natural thorns, briars, overgrown areas, and similar terrain) at their normal speed and without taking damage or suffering any other impairment. However, thorns, briars, and overgrown areas that have been magically manipulated to impede motion still affect them. If a vulpine gains Woodland Stride as a class feature, such as from the Druid class or the Ranger class, the vulpine gains the ability to use the run action through and while in undergrowth instead.
Base Languages: Common & Foxtrot
Bonus = Any non secret
Favored Class: Ranger

Vulpine, Children of the Earthmother
"The Vulpine live on the western-most continent on the campaign's map. Their lands are large, leafy forests that spread hundreds of miles in all directions across the landscape. Their buildings resemble the 1800s Japanese style, with the notable exception that all Vulpine buildings are designed to exist in harmony with their forests, rather then through hack-and-slashing away at the trees. This is done through a slow, natural process that the culture's druids and clerics guide.

The Vulpine, unlike every other race in the campaign, only worship one goddess, Alivia the Earthmother (homebrewed). Alivia's sacrifice of her own life, according to the Vulpine legends, created the primal magical energies called manna which tie the other four basic elements together, the five elements together comprising all of creation. Alivia lives on in all living creatures, and the vulpine believe she can manifest herself as pure energy. Alivia's creed is all about nature and harmony, and as a result vulpine clerics and vulpine druids aren't very different from each other in terms of their roles in the community.

As a race, the vulpine are pacifistic, though they do have a powerful armed guard. Their military forces are concerned with protecting their forest homes and the people who live there.

The Vulpine get along well with virtually every other race in the campaign; unlike dwarves they tend to measure people by merit of their actions rather then their ancestors. They specialize in divine magic and there are few arcane spellcasters in their ranks (though they are not unheard of)."

Vulpine Relations with Other Races:
Vulpine are the longest lived race in my campaign setting, and since I'm not using the woodsy elves as the "base elf", vulpine are my campaign's default tree-huger race. Elves in my campaign are highly magical and highly civilized, for those of you who played Warcraft, they're like the Quel'dorei. As a result, the elves see see the vulpine's devotion and concern with nature as a waste of a long, long life. Now, on the other hand, neither the elves nor the vulpine care for the drow, who are a fraction of elves who decided to remain to defend their homeland from an orc invasion, whereas the 'high' elves left for new territory. In the aforementioned conflict, the drow burned their once-beautiful island home to the ground and enslaved the orcs, something the vulpine see as abominable.

The Vulpine are pacifists, so they're often at odds with the Dwarves ideologically. While the Vulpine don't particularly mind the dwarves, the Vulpine's nature of preferring not to fight goes against the very foundations of dwarven society, so dwarves and Vulpine have a rather large barrier to cross in order to become friendly.

The Vulpine treat even the most sagely human scholars as if they were children (you would too if you lived to be a millennial old), so humans are often a little uncomfortable around a race that could have easily lived to see the founding of entire cities and nations.

The Vulpine enjoy a good time as much as anyone, so they get along particularly well with Gnomes, who are the universal bards in my campaign. Gnomes are defientely a party-race, and the Vulpine have a decent sense of humor to endure gnomish tricks and jokes.

The Vulpine treat Halflings much as they do humans, mostly because non Halflings have a tough time distinguishing my campaigns Halflings from human children. Although both races get along decently, the Vulpine have an accidental tendency to treat halfling scholars on their deathbeds as children.

No race in my campaign is particularly found of Orcs or Half-Orcs, but the Vulpine are the most tolerant to the greenskins of any race, in some cases feeling pity over their enslavement to the revenge-crazed drow.

My Comments, or "What I'd Like You To Do"
Here's what I'm looking for (so suggesting stuff isn't a lot me saying "Well I don't really like that . . ."). Now, text that is tiny is stuff that I've said, but have decided to update. I don't want to change my words so anyone looking at this can see my thought processes and where I'm coming from.

1) I'm not sure whether or not to call them a Monsterous Race. I was Reading the Savage Species book and nothing really sounded that civilized out of it. The Fox people match the description of "having animal features", but I'm trying to play them up to be kind of like elves; that is an elder, long-lived race (they actually outlive my campaign's elves 0_0) that's seen as knowledgeable and wise. Also, if they are a Monstrous race, do you think Dark Vision would be more appropriate then Low-Light vision? After much thought, I've decided to classify the Vulpin as humanoids. I've also decided to go with Devil's Advocate's observation that since Dark Vision is more for cave-dwellers, Low-Light Vision would make more sense.

2) I'm trying hard to keep the different races in my campaign at ECL +0. I don't really want to have to go through the complications of keeping track of varying levels due to Racial powers. Please, don't make it that good . . . .

3) As a general rule, this race hits adulthood at 25 years and ages extremely slowly. Their Maximum Age is in the lower thousands. Tail growth, as a result, is slow. Naturally, one of the Fox people is born with one tail. I was thinking of having the second grow in during childhood and the third emerging as a symbol of adulthood. Right now, I'm looking at something like this:

However, I'd also like to hear opinions on bonuses themselves. I mean, realistically few players are ever going to see their character age into the thousands. Is it even worth awarding bonuses for this? Should it just me a cosmetic note I add in the racial physiology description? Hrm. If I do scrap this idea, what other racial bonuses do you think I need / would be good? Is it fine the way it is? I'm scrapping this idea. Instead, I want to work the Multiple Tails ability into a bloodline-esque Feat. Something that you pay XP to every few levels and it causes you to grow a new tail, and with it a new power.

4) What I REALLY want is a discussion. I don't want to just have a bunch of people say "Do this." I want to see different ideas, ask questions about other people's suggestions, and make something that's my own while still getting help on it. So far

Finally, before I submit / end this post, I'm going to add a little description about the race.

Hrm, I hope it's enough, and thanks for considering to help me out :D.

Bhu

2009-04-04, 06:22 AM

You could make them Fey

Lappy9000

2009-04-04, 11:59 AM

You could search around for some other ideas; there are lots of vulpine/kitsune/foxfolk race out there. My suggestion would be to make some kick-awesomely unique racial abilities that scale with level.

Right now, the Vulpines look a little bland, although their balance seems fine. I did some searching of other fox-based races and found some pretty neat abilities:
Spell-like abilities: Use light, dancing lights, produce flame, or faerie fire as a Spell-like ability. Often called "foxfire" or something of the like. Maybe have the spells increase with level/HD.
Multiple Tails: As the vulpine age, they could start getting a new tail each age category. This could give them some kind of bonus; anything from a Charisma boost to a spell-like ability. Whoops, you already got that. Definitely go with that idea.
Balance: Maybe something like Up the Walls (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#upTheWalls), allowing them to walk on walls Prince of Persia style; as long as they end their turn on a horizontal surface. Maybe a balance to Jump/Balance checks.
Alternate Form: Able to turn into a fox/human/hybrid kinda like a lycanthrope.
Speed: Maybe 40ft base land speed or a bonus to Initiative or Reflex.

Just throwing a few ideas out there for you. It really helps your race if it stands out from the pack :smallcool:

Devils_Advocate

2009-04-04, 12:55 PM

I say give them free weapon proficiency with the special monk weapons, +1 to hit with them if they level in Monk (or Ninja or whatever), and leave the katana bastard sword treated as a martial weapon. That way there's something for characters of every class.

Making them Humanoid is probably most balanced if you want them to be LA +0. Low-light vision makes more sense for nocturnal creatures, darkvision for cavern-dwellers.

They should be called kitsunes or something similar. That's how a creature inspired by mythology is named in D&D, even it's clearly a very different monster and only borrows a few traits from something while leaving out many others essential to the original creature's nature. :smalltongue:

On gaining bonuses with age:
Aging in 3E is sort of frelled. See, high-level characters should tend to be older, since it takes time to gain levels. So older characters should on average have more levels than younger characters, reflecting their greater experience. They shouldn't have weird mental stat bonuses, if you want to model aging realistically. (But on the other hand, maybe you like the idea that D&D humans reliably get significantly smarter as they age, like dragons do. That is a potentially interesting setting element, it's just not how things work in real life.)

Elves might not start working until they finally get bored with unproductive recreation after about a century, but they level up at the same rate as humans, so they should have a surplus of really badass high-level characters because they live so long; you'd expect the guy who's been doing his job for 200 years to be really good at it by now, right? So elves can be ECL +0 and still fulfill a Tolkienesque role as an awe-inspiring superior race (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter) just by virtue of getting lots more practice than humans. This is also true of gnomes and dwarves to a somewhat lesser extent. (Humans compete with this by having larger populations. Halflings don't even try to compete, which is arguably the sensible choice.)

So you could have the multi-tailed fox people be extra awesome just by assigning aged characters plausible amounts of levels, no weird special abilities needed. A whole bunch of extra tails, then, are just an obvious sign that one is dangerously elderly (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OldMaster).

Alternately, you could go the other way around and give them racial powers that scale with hit dice, like raptorans and gith get. This is definitely the approach to take if you want to come up with bonuses that actual players get. But they look like a solid, straightforward LA +0 race already, so you might prefer to avoid turning them into a weird level-adjusted thing whose racial powers take several paragraphs to describe.

If you use the standard Aging Effects table for most races, you could just give these folks their own weird age categories and aging effects. You could even go wild and make aging strictly beneficial instead of a tradeoff (that sucks for almost all non-spellcasters) if you're willing to give different age categories different level adjustments or racial hit dice. (That second option is probably the way to go, if you do that.)

I think Wizards treats Katana and Wakizashi as bastard swords and shortswords, respectively. But bastard swords require Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use effectively, so that would work.

DoomedPaladin

2009-04-04, 02:01 PM

Multiple Tails = Multiple Racial Feats.

VelvetThunder

2009-04-04, 03:46 PM

One thing I think you ought to consider when building your race is their relation to the other races in the world. It often goes unthought of as to how they'd react to a Dwarf or an Orc etc. Part of the joy of running other races comes from interactions with other races. Take the Rivialry between Dwarves and Elves for example. I couldn't see them as being near as memorable if they didn't have that going.

Icewalker

2009-04-04, 05:50 PM

I'm not sure a bonus with aging is the best idea. It's cool, but it would be hard to work out with balance compared to traditional races. If you're set on it as an idea, it's not unusable, it would just be a lot harder to balance.

Balance-wise, as it stands now, I like the look of it, but the tail bonus needs to be small to negligible to keep it balanced I'd say.

You could replace one of their other abilities with some simple spell like abilities, with caster level based on age, equal to the number of tails, or something similar.

Golden-Esque

2009-04-04, 08:52 PM

You could make then Fey
I didn't think of that. That's interesting, and it does sound a lot better then 'Monsterous Humanoid'. I'll have to look and see what kind of modifiers / ECL stuff Feys have to put up with.

You could search around for some other ideas; there are lots of vulpine/kitsune/foxfolk race out there. My suggestion would be to make some kick-awesomely unique racial abilities that scale with level.

Right now, the Vulpines look a little bland, although their balance seems fine. I did some searching of other fox-based races and found some pretty neat abilities:
Pural for a Vulpine is just Vulpine. I though Vulpines sounded kinda awkward. Try saying it outloud, haha. Now imagine talking about them with your friends and backtracking, saying "Ew . . . ". Fun story, for sure! xD

I actually have a bunch of those abilities already 0o. Cool! I remember one idea for Additional Tails that I saw was like "+1 to effective Charisma for every tail past first". I was like "Uh . . . OP Sorcerers?!?!"

I say give them free weapon proficiency with the special monk weapons, +1 to hit with them if they level in Monk (or Ninja or whatever), and leave the katana bastard sword treated as a martial weapon. That way there's something for characters of every class.

Making them Humanoid is probably most balanced if you want them to be LA +0. Low-light vision makes more sense for nocturnal creatures, darkvision for cavern-dwellers.

They should be called kitsunes or something similar. That's how a creature inspired by mythology is named in D&D, even it's clearly a very different monster and only borrows a few traits from something while leaving out many others essential to the original creature's nature.

Yeah, I definetely think that Low-Light was the way to go; Foxes aren't a "I see you in the absence of light!" kind of animal.

I do like them being humanoids, but without looking at the rules for Fey, that idea is starting to grow on me, since it implies a tie to the natural world.

Vulpine is an adjetive that implies fox-like traits (the Latin word for the fox's Genius is Vulpes). Thanks to an anime that won't be named, I think of Kitsune as implying more demonic heritege then I'd like, but I'll think about the name some more.

I think Wizards treats Katana and Wakizashi as bastard swords and shortswords, respectively. But bastard swords require Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use effectively, so that would work.

I do like free weapon proficiencies :D.

Multiple Tails = Multiple Racial Feats.
So you think I should have each tail as its own thing?

One thing I think you ought to consider when building your race is their relation to the other races in the world. It often goes unthought of as to how they'd react to a Dwarf or an Orc etc. Part of the joy of running other races comes from interactions with other races. Take the Rivialry between Dwarves and Elves for example. I couldn't see them as being near as memorable if they didn't have that going.

I'm sorry, I totally didn't post all that :(. There are relations and stuff; the elves have a really strong feeling of, well, I don 't want to call it jealous, but kinda like "What's THAT guy doing?" sort of thing. The Vulpine are the longest lived race in my campaign setting, and I'm not using the woodsy elves as the base elf. I'm going with the Arcane Magic-Loving High Elves, and they see the Vulpine's devotion and concern with nature as a waste of a long, long life.

The Vulpine are pacifists, so they're often at odds with the Dwarves ideologically. While the Vulpine don't particularly mind the dwarves, the Vulpine's nature of preferring not to fight goes against the very foundations of dwarven society, so dwarves and Vulpine have a rather large barrier to cross in order to become friendly.

The Vulpine treat even the most sagely human scholars as if they were children (you would too if you lived to be a millennial old), so humans are often a little uncomfortable around a race that could have easily lived to see the founding of entire cities and nations.

The Vulpine enjoy a good time as much as anyone, so they get along particularly well with Gnomes, who are the universal bards in my campaign. Gnomes are defientely a party-race, and the Vulpine have a decent sense of humor to endure gnomish tricks and jokes.

The Vulpine treat Halflings much as they do humans, mostly because non Halflings have a tough time distinguishing my campaigns Halflings from human children. Although both races get along decently, the Vulpine have an accidental tendency to treat halfling scholars on their deathbeds as children.

No race in my campaign is particularly found of Orcs or Half-Orcs, but the Vulpine are the most tolerant to the greenskins of any race.

Hope that helps a little :P.

I'm not sure a bonus with aging is the best idea. It's cool, but it would be hard to work out with balance compared to traditional races. If you're set on it as an idea, it's not unusable, it would just be a lot harder to balance.

Balance-wise, as it stands now, I like the look of it, but the tail bonus needs to be small to negligible to keep it balanced I'd say.

You could replace one of their other abilities with some simple spell like abilities, with caster level based on age, equal to the number of tails, or something similar.

I definitely agree with the bonus on aging thing. It's too random and most likely, none of my players are going to live / play that long on one character to get them.

Perhaps I should make tail growth based on ECL.

Thanks for everyone's help so far, I'm going to start reading about the Fey, and I hope to hear more from you guys when I'm done :D.

Golden-Esque

2009-04-05, 12:17 AM

Okay, I've updated my original posts with new ideas. For anyone scrolling down here, I'll give you a quick summary of what's new.

#1 - Two new Racial Abilities.
#1.1 Foxfire gives the vulpine the ability to use Produce Fire and Faerie Fire several times per day (1 + Wis modifier, min 1/day). This plays off of the Japanese myth of will-o-wisps.
#1.2 Woodland Stride works identically to the Druid / Ranger / Scout(?) ability. Also, the vulpine's version grants the vulpine the ability to use the run action while in undergrowth if the vulpine gains Woodland Stride as a class feature.
#2 - I put the inter-racial feelings from the post before this up into the main post. It looked too important to leave down here :D.
#3 - Vulpine movement speed has been increased to 40ft.

Also, I have decided to make Multiple Tails a racial feat of some kind. I'm still playing with it, but what I'm thinking of right now is the following:

Kitsune Bloodline
Vulpine Feat
Prerequisites: 1st level only, Vulpine race
You were born with a strong tie to the natural world, which increases your ki (life force). The increase in ki results in the growing of additional tails over time, as well as new powers and abilities.
Tail 2 - Feet: At first level, your bloodline ignites unexpectedly with ki, causing you to grow a second tail. This tail manifests the ki in your feet, increasing your base movement speed increases by 10 ft and you granting you Run as a bonus feat.
Tail 3 - Hands: At second level, your ki increases again, causing you to grow a third tail. This tail manifests the ki from your hands, granting you a +1 competency bonus to all Dexterity skill checks. In addition, select a number of Dexterity-modified skills equal to your Intelligence modifier. Those skills are always treated as class skills for you.
Tail 4 - Stomach: At fifth level, your ki increases again, causing you to grow a fourth tail. This tail manifests ki from your gut, causing you to become immune to poisons and granting you either Endurance or Toughness as a bonus feat (your choice).
Tail 5 - Heart: At eighth level, your ki increases, causing you to grow a fifth tail. This tail manifests ki from your heart, empowering you with force of heart. You gain the ability to channel ki from your tails, granting you ki power equal to half the number of tails you have. Any class that uses ki as a resource (such as the Ninja class) can use this ki as if it was granted from their class levels. In addition, you can expend one charge of this ki (and only this ki) to empower your spells and martial attacks with energy, granting all attacks and spells you use +1d6 points of damage.
Tail 6 - Mouth: At 11th level, your ki increases, causing you to grow a sixth tail. This tail manifests ki from your voice, granting you a +1 inherent bonus to your Charisma and granting you a +2 bonus on Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate skill checks.
Tail 7 - Eyes: At 14th level, your ki increases, causing you to grow a seventh tail. This tail manifests ki from your eyes, granting you the spell-like ability of True Sight. This ki ability acts like the spell of the same name, except it is always active.
Tail 8 - Crown: At 17th level, your ki increases, causing you to grow a eight tail. This tail manifests ki from your mind, granting you a +1 inherent bonus to Intelligence and Wisdom. Also, the power of your racial spell-like abilities increases, granting you the ability to cast Fireball a number of times per day equal to 1 + your Wis modifier.
[U]Tail 9 - Soul:[U] At 20th level, your ki increases, causing you to grow your ninth and final tail. This tail manifests ki from the very essence of your soul, and grants you the Timeless Body class feature (see Monk class features), except that if you had any penalties as a result of aging, they are removed. In addition, you also gain a +1 to all Attack rolls, saves, and skill checks you make.

So, do you think it's OP? It's always easier, in my opinion, to get an idea and then nerf it into the ground :P.

Tempest Fennac

2009-04-05, 01:33 AM

What's interresting here is that I made a race with the same name and some fluff similarities a while back ( http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95436 ). I ended up giving them immunity to ageing penalties. I'd say classing them as humanoids would be fine (Gnolls are listed as Humanoids, as are Catfolk). Fey would fit doe to your race having spell-like abilities, though.

EDIT: This reminds me of a Werefox race which an inactive forum member named Fenric ( http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=5106 ) made. The details can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/stocksdale_tx/FoxInfo.html (he's Werefox freeform characters have a Japanese culture as well).

Golden-Esque

2009-04-05, 03:39 AM

What's interresting here is that I made a race with the same name and some fluff similarities a while back ( http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95436 ). I ended up giving them immunity to ageing penalties. I'd say classing them as humanoids would be fine (Gnolls are listed as Humanoids, as are Catfolk). Fey would fit doe to your race having spell-like abilities, though.

EDIT: This reminds me of a Werefox race which an inactive forum member named Fenric ( http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=5106 ) made. The details can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/stocksdale_tx/FoxInfo.html (he's Werefox freeform characters have a Japanese culture as well).

Wow, that's actually really weird 0_0. Are you sure we're not related or something? Like in one of those horrible "Twin meets other twin and hilarity (not really) ensues" things?

Or maybe I saw it a while back and it popped into my head while I was brainstorming the idea. That can happen too, one of my DMs loved Voltron as a kid, and one day we were all together watching it for the nostalgia and hey! It turns out that there's an inn in Voltron called 'The Drunken Wrench' at one point. Hey! That's my DM's Inn of choice for bar fights. Creepy what our ID slips into our conscious mind . . . .

If I may ask, why did you give your vulpines (I like vulpine as a singular and plural term better :P) Cold Resistance? Seems a little odd, but I guess our ideas need to part somewhere, right?

Tempest Fennac

2009-04-05, 04:15 AM

I decided to give them that because of their thick fur (I mainly designed them as being my idea race, so immunity to ageing and cold weather were essential). Unless you were born in Lincolnshire in England, I don't think there's any chance of us being related.:smalltongue:

Golden-Esque

2009-04-05, 05:10 AM

I decided to give them that because of their thick fur (I mainly designed them as being my idea race, so immunity to ageing and cold weather were essential). Unless you were born in Lincolnshire in England, I don't think there's any chance of us being related.:smalltongue:

Aw, no hilarious spin-off story for me :(.

Anyway, Timeless Body was a feature I was thinking of giving my race as well, but in the long run I felt like it was an unnecessary kick in the nuts to the elves of my campaign, who already resent the fact that a race out there lives longer then they do. Silly, silly elves . . . .

Tempest Fennac

2009-04-05, 08:04 AM

Something else you could try for them is use a different ageing penalty system (I hate the standard one so much due to the mental bonuses, combined with how many physical stat points you lose, that I came up with my own system: http://forum.mydndgame.com/index.php/topic,109.0.html ). (You could give Elves Timeless Body as well if a different system doesn't work out.)

Golden-Esque

2009-04-05, 08:54 PM

Something else you could try for them is use a different ageing penalty system (I hate the standard one so much due to the mental bonuses, combined with how many physical stat points you lose, that I came up with my own system: http://forum.mydndgame.com/index.php/topic,109.0.html ). (You could give Elves Timeless Body as well if a different system doesn't work out.)

I'll worry more about the aging system in the future. To be honest, I can't forsee any campaign I run in this setting lasting long enough for anyone to get elderly :P.

However, the site you linked is pretty cool, I've been reading it for most of the afternoon; I really like some of the suggestions you got on your Sorcerer forum post.

Tempest Fennac

2009-04-06, 01:31 AM

Thanks. :smallsmile: I've never been in a campaign which has lasted that long, but I like to be prepared for the worse just in case the DM decides to turn the campaign into a decade-spanning quest.